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African immigrants can have racist beliefs about black Americans just as much as anyone. (Including black Americans.) Kendi's "How to be an Antiracist" gets into this in a way I found to be eye-opening.

At the time her response was that she doesn't necessarily believe in black superiority... it's just something people should address.

Does this sound ok to your ears? If this was a white supremacist, we would all correctly be shouting about how it's a dog whistle and not an acceptable response.

I wish more people would read 'How to Be an Antiracist.' I believe he's absolute right in that the only way forward is to call out racist beliefs from everyone, not selectively.
Selectively excusing racist beliefs from "our side" will only open the door to more racism.

Ok? None of them look like books whose goal is to prove that racism exists. With a book title like, "How to be an Antiracist", I would think anybody would understand that the target audience is people who are well past questioning whether racism is still a thing. It's like expecting a cookbook to open with studies on why meals are a good idea.

Ok, this is fascinating. Even beyond escaping my own echo chamber, it's really neat to escape other echo chambers.

Let's escape the woke bubble:

  1. How to Be an Antiracist 
  2. White Fagility 
  3. Between the World and Me

The books it recommends are pretty diverse - Maya Angelou to Peter Drucker to Plato.

Or how about the Trump bubble:

  1. Time to Get Tough 
  2. Righteous Indignation 
  3. Going Rogue

Lots of religion here. What if we escape atheism?

  1. Letter to a Christian Nation 
  2. God is Not Great 
  3. The God Delusion

Hmm. Not so much religion here... but we got Aldous Huxley, Bruce Li and Richard Feynmann.

I think... I've got a lot of reading to do. I LOVE this tool.

to quote from "how to be an antiracist" - a best selling book during this last year

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/08/10/ibram-x-k...

>The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. . . . The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

I'm not super fond of the idea of indefinite discrimination on race. How do we run those numbers, who decides what is or isn't a good policy, does that change with the politics of who is president every 4 or 8 years? Especially because I didn't ask to be born my race or sex, but I was told by my dean of STEM that "it's not advantageous for this position you are a white scientist" followed by "you came from a well-educated family right?". My lower class farmer dad thought that was funny.

I've since left the college system due to what I feel is now labled antiracist discrimination.

We really do because our discourse is being dominated by crazy voices.

What do you think about this?

Minority, Women-Owned Businesses Get First Bid on New PPP Loans - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-07/minority-...

What about voices like James Lindsay and Christopher Rufo?

We are doubling down on this new era where we are experimenting with the thesis that Discrimination can and will create (long-lasting) Equity. With policies in place for decades like Affirmative Action in the US and BEE in South Africa I'm not convinced in the thesis. Corporations in the US have now went further with more Corporate Affirmative Action programs like Microsofts commitment to hire more Black employees which is being looked into by the Department of Labor as Discrimination (https://abcnews.go.com/Business/department-labor-investigati...). Microsoft is 4.5% Black employees so they are underrepresented as it is.

How do we have discussions on Race? Can Discrimination create Equity?

“The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

As a Mormon[1], this is interesting. Not because I disagree, necessarily, I certainly see the similarity between Wokeness and religion. But I think an anthropologist would see a difference. At the heart of the experience of being a Mormon (and presumably other religions, though I'm most familiar with this one) is belief in a Prophet (capital P) and a collection of scripture. If you ask any Mormon who the Prophet is, they'll tell you, and they'll all give the same answer. So, who is the prophet of Woke, and what are the scriptures?

1 Culturally, at least, if not really religiously. I'm about as much of a Mormon as Larry David is a Jew.

EDIT: the article linked does partially answer my question:

> There is what we could think of as a triple-Testament tome, consisting of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist. A box set of the three would take its place on coffeetables and mantlepieces nationwide.

A racial construct has been used to shape every facet of our society and we can't make right those wrongs with out maintaining an awareness and understanding of that construct. We can't undo the historical (and current) harms of racism with out continuing to see race.

This is why the colorblind approach to solving racial issues failed. All it did was make us blind to the continuing harms of racism and there for unable to change those systems and solve those problems.

Kendi expands on it in great detail in his book "How to Be an Antiracist"

Here's a TED talk version of the explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxbl5QgFZw

There is a similar system in the US, based on skin color. The article's title references the book How To Be An Antiracist. It's very much on people's minds today, and the article was written to see what lessons the US can learn from the situation in India (including Indians in the US, where caste-ism remains a problem).

https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525...

Racism has nothing to do with the actions of the individual, under the new paradigm[0]. If you are White, you are racist, simple as that. If you wish to be "color-blind" it's because you have "white privilege." There is no way to absolve yourself of privilege so you must discriminate[1] to fix racism

0 https://www.supersummary.com/why-are-all-the-black-kids-sitt...

1

> The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

Ibram X Kendi - How to Be an Antiracist

> Racially skewed allocation of large company's stock due to a combination of historical discrimination lumping capital into white folk's pockets until ~60 years ago and the compounded nature of wealth is EXACTLY the sort of thing actual social theorists mean when they say "structural racism".

Ironically Ibram X. Kendi uses this exact example in "How to Be an Antiracist."

> But it’s not really my place to take issue with what terms in which contexts call to mind slavery for other people.

That's all you had to know.

> I think we need to get to the point where the term “racist” is not used as a generic catch-all for anything race-related.

You should understand that this supports racist ideas and policy when you say it. Edit: unless you mean "in another 400 years after we've made radical policy changes"

Edit again: I can't reply bc posting speed limits and the balance of racism/antiracism in HN threads, so please go read e.g. "How to be an Antiracist" and you'll see where I'm coming from.

> Writing this piece, I found myself thinking about Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist.” Kendi’s central argument is that it is policy outcomes, not personal intent, that matter. “Racist policies are defined as any policy that leads to racial inequity,” he told me when I interviewed him in 2019. “And so, for me, racial language in the policy doesn’t matter, intent of the policymaker doesn’t matter, even the consciousness of the policymaker, that it’s going lead to inequity, doesn’t matter. It’s all about the fundamental outcome.”

I’m pulling this out next time my neighbors cite “traffic” when opposing any development.

Between The World and Me spent over 100 weeks in the NYT bestseller list. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the other book cited, wrote another book, How To Be An Antiracist, which was a bestselling book in the U.S. 2020. Another bestselling book in this vein was White Fragility. Check out the sales figures from May-June here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/22/sales-o...